I for one will be ordering an Hitichi E7K60 drive (the E model is for extended, 24x7 usage) to put in my mini, along with a gig of ram. The reviews on this drive are outstanding and, in my opinion, worth $40 or so extra dollars over a 5400 counterpart.

"I for one will be ordering an Hitichi E7K60 drive (the E model is for extended, 24x7 usage) to put in my mini, along with a gig of ram. The reviews on this drive are outstanding and, in my opinion, worth $40 or so extra dollars over a 5400 counterpart."

4200rpm is way to slow. I think the drive more than anything holds back the mini.

Actually, the amount of RAM slows it down more than anything. If there isn't enough RAM, then the computer uses virtual memory, which is of course the hard drive. Even with a 7200 rpm HDD, using that as main memory is a lot slower than real memory.

Within 30 minutes of taking my mini out of its box, I had a 1 gig chip installed. I'll do the 7200 rpm HDD when a 100 gig model comes out and is reasonably priced.

IMHO it would be better to connect an external hard drive via Firewire or USB 2.0. You don't have to worry about the additional heat a 7200rpm 2.5" drive would cause. You could install Panter on the external and tell the Mac Mini to boot from it. Then use the internal for storage or backing up important data.
You can put a huge 200+ 7200rpm [even 10k rpm SATA if you feel the need for speed] into an external case for under $200 especially if you live near a Fry's Electronics or buy online.

CUT Within 30 minutes of taking my mini out of its box, I had a 1 gig chip installed. I'll do the 7200 rpm HDD when a 100 gig model comes out and is reasonably priced.

I read somewhere else in this forum that Seagate has or comes with an 100 GB 7200 2.5' drive and the person who told us, wanted to put one in the Mini. It is not sure, if it just as stable as the Hitachi though, it has not proven itself yet! Cheaper and more secure option of course is to have it boot from an external drive. Don't know if it would slowed down by the Firewire connection though.That external drive should also be very quite (I have here a 120 GB 7200 3.5' Maxtor) which is NOT quite at all, but it might have been damaged (first 10 GB I have not in use, as it slowed down the whole drive) _________________take care,
____________________________Jim
~ Registered Linux user #310054 ~
made in Xandros 3.0 (Linux)